Hacker Behind JailbreakMe.com Identified As Brown University Student

Monday August 1, 2011 1:51 PM PDT by Jordan Golson

Comex, the anonymous hacker behind JailbreakMe.com, a website that enables easy jailbreaking of iOS devices, has been unmasked by Forbes.

Nicholas Allegra lives with his parents in Chappaqua, New York. The tall, shaggy-haired and bespectacled 19-year old has been on leave from Brown University since last winter, looking for an internship...

He calls himself an Apple “fanboy,” and describes Android’s more open platform as “the enemy.” “I guess it’s just about the challenge, more than anything else,” he says.

Allegra describes jailbreaking as "like editing an English paper... You just go through and look for errors. I don’t know why I seem to be so effective at it.”

The Forbes article ends by wondering if Apple's security team needs a new intern. It wouldn't be the first time a jailbreaker ended up at Infinite Loop. Earlier this year MobileNotifier developer Peter Hajas was picked up as an Apple summer intern.

Chappaqua, NY - The iPhone hacking community was stunned today when it was revealed that the longtime firmware hacker known as "comex" is actually famed Gryffindor wizard Harry Potter.

Potter, who dropped out of Hogwart's School of Witchcraft shortly before entering his senior year, has been attending Brown University under the alias "Nicholas Allegra". His accomplishments include hacking the Nintendo Wii, jailbreaking several iOS versions, and perhaps most notably, defeating the legendary evil wizard Voldemort during a cease-fire at the infamous "Battle of Hogwarts".

Potter's unmasking at Brown isn't a complete surprise. His close friend and confidant Hermione Granger had been spotted around the Brown campus at various times throughout 2009 and 2010. Potter's girlfriend, and likely future wife Ginerva "Ginny" Weasley has not been seen at the school, however that hasn't stopped the student body from arguing whether she is "kinda cute", "smokin' hot", or "a bit of a butterface".

Wow. Really? If you equate all iOS jailbreaking with legitimate use, you're rather naive.

I didn't. I agree and acknowledge that there's a lot of software piracy happening on iOS, which jailbreaking enables. That was never in dispute. Your prior posts implied that there were no legitimate reasons to jailbreak, only piracy, and that's what I objected to.

Especially as Apple sees the writing on the wall and legitimately buys up people who create some aftermarket favorites to integrate into the real iOS, there are fewer and fewer genuinely believable excuses for a 'need' to jailbreak anything.

There's some writing they let themselves read, and other bits they studiously ignore (at least for the time being, or, in the case of theming, likely until their dying breath). Does that mean that any jailbreak-dependent hacks or alterations should be required to meet some arbitrary "importance threshold" for any jailbreaking to be allowed to take place? I don't think so.

Jailbreaking itself is perfectly legal, as I know you know, and allows what is pretty clearly the overall best mobile OS out there to be improved further in specific areas where people perceive failings. (Apple's philosophy of simplifying user experiences enough for 80% of people, or rather, how far they take that as a practice, doesn't always sit well with the other 20% — should they have to suffer Android just for the sake of a few extra features, or start with the solid foundation of iOS and make up the difference through Cydia?)

It's evident from even a quick glance at your other posts that you're no troll. There's no need to take an absolutist, "us-or-them" stance regarding this subject, either. Granted, piracy is a troubling problem, but it doesn't eclipse the many positive uses of jailbreaking, most of which I would say are "legitimate" despite not being official.

If nothing else, Mr. Allegra and the wider community of jailbreak software developers serve as a means of both keeping Apple honest (to some extent, anyway), and providing Apple with feedback and inspiration on new directions for iOS. If the remaining devs suddenly just gave up for some reason and switched off their Macs, Apple would probably have to depend entirely on Google for those things (and Google, frankly, is behaving like a forum troll).

Rumors by Product

MacRumors attracts a broad audience
of both consumers and professionals interested in
the latest technologies and products. We also boast an active community focused on
purchasing decisions and technical aspects of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Mac platforms.